


crumble

by MasterFinland



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Child Abuse, Desperation, Gen, Hysteria, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Pedophilia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sex, Stupidity, Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, alois deserved better, alois dies at the end, alois is a child, but if you disagree let me know please!, dont think theres enough stuff for graphic depictions of violence, hannah and claude also die but that is only implied, it is not shippy, it is very explicit, its rough, maternal Hannah Annafellows, minor blood/gore/vomit/sexual fluids mentioned, no happy ending, oof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:22:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24229582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MasterFinland/pseuds/MasterFinland
Summary: Hannah is many, many things, but a fool is not one of them.Hannah watches, and Hannah does nothing.
Relationships: Claude Faustus/Alois Trancy, Hannah Annafellows & Alois Trancy, Hannah Annafellows & Claude Faustus
Comments: 14
Kudos: 84





	crumble

Hannah is no fool.

She knows exactly what Claude does in there, what he does to that boy. She knows, when he exits, that he has not read the child in his care a bedtime story. He has not tucked that thirteen-year-old boy in with a kiss on the head. He has not brushed his fluffy blonde hair from his face. He has not smiled, adoringly, and mumbled nonsensical promises of paternal love into the child’s forehead as he drifts to sleep. 

She knows that Claude has not treated this child like the little boy that he is. The little boy that he should be, and would be, if not for him.

Hannah is many things, but she is not stupid.

Hannah is a coward. She is a demon. She is shy, she is meek. She is ugly, brash, and ill tempered. She is moody, clumsy, and incompetent, destructive to a bitter fault. 

But Hannah is not, sadly, the idiot she so desperately wishes that she was.

* * *

When Claude finally exits the bedroom, he hands her the soiled wash bin from the vanity. The water left in it is cloudy, and the washcloth is tinged pink. 

Hannah sees red, because she is ill tempered.

“What have you done to him?” Hannah spits, because she is brash. She keeps her voice soft because she can still hear the sobbing behind the closed door, and the child does not need to know that she knows what his butler has done to him. 

“Nothing he didn’t ask for.” Claude hisses back at her, gold eyes flashing yellow. He fixes his lapels, and turns his collar back down. He does not look like he has just finished fucking a child in his own bed, where he should feel safest. He does not look like he is ruining what little life the little boy has left. “Watch your tone.”

Hannah winces, and turns her eyes down. She moves past him silently, ignoring the gaze boring into her back, holding tightly to the wash bin in her hands. 

The remaining water in the scalloped bowl is pink, and cloudy, and Hannah is nauseous.

The porcelain cracks in her hold, and precious, fragile glass digs into her palms. It is ironic, and the thought only makes her angrier. 

Hannah is a coward, and she is moody, but she is no fool. 

She welcomes the pain, and breathes out in relief when the vase shatters in her hands. She will get hit for this tomorrow, and she looks forward to it.

* * *

Alois is throwing a tantrum, screaming and sobbing and flailing, because he is a  _ child _ , and Hannah wants to knock him out. She wants to stop his pain, his desperation, if only for a little while, but she does not know how.

Claude steps into view of the wailing child. Hannah does not see him, because he is standing arrogantly behind her, but she does feel his aura the moment he arrives, late on purpose to torture his food. He puts a hand on her waist, condescending, and Hannah is filled with fury hot enough to rival the sun. Her expression does not change. 

“Your Highness,” Claude breathes, and Alois looks up, hiccuping. He breaks into a grin, but there is fear in his eyes, panic in his scent. Hannah’s nostrils flare, and she looks to the ground. Alois begins to laugh, hysterical, babbling his gratitude to Claude for coming to get him, to save him. He begs for a kiss, even as he cries, chest heaving.

He does not want what Claude is giving him, but he is desperate, eager, for attention, and he will take what he can get.

Hannah is incompetent, incapable of calming her highness down from a fit, to soothe him into normal behavior. She knows this. She understands this, recognizes this absolutely agonizing fault.

But she is not stupid.

* * *

Claude calls her in to change the linens, but he does not tell her that he has just finished with the child. He is a mess, starfished on the bed and heaving on sobs so loud and so hard that his ribcage rattles. Hannah wonders, briefly, if Claude has broken one of his ribs again.

His legs are shaking, and Hannah does not look between them. She cannot, because she is shy.

Hannah is meek. She will not look up and watch as Claude redresses himself like he has not just betrayed the trust of the child once again, and she will not look when Claude kisses him, biting his tongue and making him scream, because she is shy, and she is meek.

Alois wails, but he is too weak to struggle, and he is mostly just glad that someone is loving him, even if it’s in all the wrong ways. Hannah’s eyes sting, but it is because she is meek, and not because she wants to take the boy and run, run, run, until there’s nowhere else to go and nothing else to save him from. 

She crosses the room and wets a washcloth to cool the child’s feverish skin. He will need a bath to soothe the ache in his hips and back, and he will need salve for his bites and bruises, should he let her apply it. Sometimes Alois displays the marks to get a rise out of Claude, as if they don’t all already pretend that they have no idea what’s going on.

“You are a monster,” she snarls, tearful and venomous. She does not look at him, refuses to do so, too busy trying to calm the child down from his hysteria. There is vomit by her feet.

“It was an order,” he says, easy and simple. It was on the tip of his tongue, and Hannah is filled with grief. They both know he is lying. 

Claude leaves, like he has not just done the worst thing in the world.

She is not stupid.

While the child is semi-lucid and compliant, out of his mind with pain and feelings he wants so, so badly to be love, Hannah will wrap him in his soiled, bloodied blankets and carry his shivering body to the bathroom. She will run the water, no warmer than he likes, and she will settle him into it carefully. She will try not to think about what Claude has done, because she is a coward.

She will let the child sob and dig his fingernails into her arms as she cleans him, as gentle as she can possibly be, but he is torn and bleeding, again, and it will take time to stop burning when he moves. He will not be able to walk tomorrow, and Claude will have to carry him to and from the bed. Claude will ruin him again, the moment he asks, and, ultimately, make things worse, and Hannah will be punished for it.

She wishes Claude had killed her, all those years ago. She wishes Claude would kill her now.

She is a coward.

But, for now, while the child is sleepy and quiet, Hannah will wash his hair, and, because she is meek, she will whisper apologies once he has finally fallen into a dreamless sleep. She will brush her fingers through his damp hair, combing out knots. She will rub his back beneath the blankets, and hope that it is because of her that he is sleeping so peacefully.

He looks like the child he is, buried under so many blankets in the middle of this giant bed. Hannah aches, useless and destructive.

She will not speak to Claude the rest of the week, because she is angry, and she is too much of a coward to do anything about it.

Hannah is not stupid, and she holds onto this fact with desperation.

* * *

Hannah lifts the crumpled body of the child, too weak to move. Claude did not even bother taking him in the bed this time, nor did he bother calling Hannah to collect him. She needs to get him into the tub, though she doubts it will make much difference at this point.

His light is fading, and she can taste his blood on her tongue.

Her eye socket, devoid of the now-splattered eye it once held, throbs. Hannah holds the boy, the child, to her chest, and carries him to his room. She locks the door behind her. Tears blur her vision.

A very small hand touches her face, trembling so violently it’s almost still, and Hannah chokes on a sob. She leans into the tiny palm, the palm of a child, and cries.

“Oh, Your Highness, Your Highness…” she pulls him somehow closer, crouching down to the floor and curling over him. Her knees hit the wood hard, and she will bruise, but that’s fine. She is ugly, on the inside, and the outside of her should match.

“Hannah,” Alois slurs, and Hannah buries her face in his hair. He wraps himself around her, seeking the security she is more than happy to provide, even if she is undeserving of the trust. He begins to cry, earnest and loud and heavy, afraid to die, and Hannah just holds him, rocking and crying with him, because she is incompetent, and a coward, and she cannot do anything to keep him alive.

When he has calmed enough Hannah will take him to the bath, and she will clean him as gently as she can manage, both of them red and puffy. Hannah will stroke his face and apologize, and Alois will let her press their foreheads together, will let her press kisses to his cheeks, his nose, and tell him that she loves him, hellfire burning within her.

Hannah is giving him, in his final moments, the affection, the love, that he had so deeply craved for so very long. She is too late, because she is a coward in every sense of the word.

Alois, exhausted, will die in her arms later that night, but she will not let him go until Claude comes to collect his dues, and she has stabbed him clean through and dragged him back to hell with her.

Hannah is many, many things, and a fool is one of them.


End file.
